With regard to triviality the case is not so clear, yet I feel strongly that it is a relative, not an absolute, quality. The term should be classed with that other misused word—superficiality. No book, of course, and no mind is absolutely thorough, and the lesser grades of knowledge are as important in their place as the higher. What we should condemn is not that a man, or a book, possesses a certain slight degree of knowledge or of ability, but the fact that, possessing it, he believes or represents it to be a higher degree. A man desires, we will say, to memorize the Russian alphabet, so that he may read the proper names on book titles. Is he to be condemned because he knows no more of Russian? Another wishes to wield a hammer dextrously enough to drive a nail without smashing his fingers. Is he “superficial” because he is not an expert cabinet-maker? Still another has learned to play the piano well enough to amuse himself in his idle hours. Does his lack of skill lay him open to the charge of “superficiality?” These people may, it is true, think that they are respectively a Russian scholar, a skilled carpenter, and a good pianist; then and then only are they culpable. The “superficiality,” in other words, consists in mistaking a lesser degree of knowledge for a higher or in thinking that the lesser degree suffices for something that requires the higher—not in the mere limitation of the possessor. A superficial book is that which, skimming the surface of the subject, persuades the reader that he has gone into its depths; as for the skimming itself, that might be quite adequate and sufficient for some purposes. So with “triviality.” Nothing is trivial that has an aim and accomplishes it; as for the gradation of aims from unimportant up to important, I leave that to others. Who shall say whether the passing of an idle hour or the addition of a few facts to one’s store of knowledge is the more important? The idle hour may be the recreation period of a hard-working mind, without which it might break down from over-pressure, leaving to less competent minds the completion of its useful labor. The few facts might be quite unfruitful. This is why we should hesitate to condemn a trivial book that has beauty of form or some other positive virtue to commend it. Triviality is objectionable only when it masquerades as importance. Perhaps it would be better to say: a book that pretends to excellence along any line where it is really valueless is a dangerous book. This brings us back to Truth as a criterion of excellence, for such a book is a hypocritical or false book, as much as if it definitely asserted as a fact that which is untrue.
When a book, therefore, comes up as a candidate for omission from the purchasing list, or perhaps for exclusion after it has actually been placed on the shelves, the librarian’s first duty is to inquire whether it is objectionable because of falsity, of evil morality or of impropriety. The first question may be determinable only by reference to an expert. If the second is alleged, it is well to inquire whether the supposed immorality of the book be not in fact simply impropriety, and if impropriety is the only objection, whether it is of kind and amount likely to be properly offensive. If the charge of immorality is sustained I see no place for the book on the shelves of a public circulating library.
What has been said may seem to need rounding out with specific illustrations and instances, but it is particularly desirable to avoid here anything in the nature of purely personal opinion and prejudice. It might be possible of course to define the content of certain well-known works by their conformity or non-conformity with the canons above laid down, without attempting to settle the question, at the moment, whether the degree of non-conformity, if it exists, is high enough to make exclusion from a public library desirable or necessary. From this point of view Othello, we will say, is a play teaching a moral lesson, in doing which it discusses sin, but never with approval, expressed or implied. The author uses words and expressions not in accordance with modern standards of propriety, although not contrary to those of his own time. In like manner Boccacio’s “Decameron” may be characterized as a collection of short stories connected by thin narrative, often telling of wrongdoing in a manner clearly implying that it is usual and unobjectionable, with use of words and incidents frequently contrary not only to modern ideas of propriety, but also to those of the author’s time, except in the dissolute circles for which the tales were originally written. Some of the stories, however, teach morality, and the literary style and method are beautiful and commendable, while the pictures of society are truthful. The implications of customary vice are simply reflections of life as the author knew it. “Gil Blas,” by Le Sage, continuing in this vein, we may call a tale of adventure in which everything is set down as it happens, good, bad and indifferent; important and trivial, with a hero who is somewhat of a rogue, although the wickedness is incidental and is described in such a way that the reader never mistakes it for virtue even when the writer tells it with a relish. The implication that wrongdoing is common, though undoubtedly conveyed, leaves the impression only that it is common among the people and under the circumstances of the tale, which is undoubtedly correct.
It would greatly aid the library censor if he could have annotations of this sort on all books intended for promiscuous public circulation. For this purpose, in fact, all literature should be evaluated by the light of this one color of the critical spectrum. The two or three books just noted possess at least some of the elements of greatness; yet good people differ regarding the extent to which they should be made freely accessible to the general public. I have tried to set down regarding them data on which all may agree, for the purpose of impressing upon you the fact that disagreement is not so much regarding the data as regarding the application to them of principles which, if they have been stated correctly, are few, simple and readily accepted.
We have been lightly skimming the surface of a subject vital to all who have to do with the production and distribution of books—to authors, editors, publishers, booksellers, and above all to us librarians. The ranks of readers are swelling to-day; it is our boast that we are doing our best to swell them. They are recruited from classes whose literature—if we may so extend the term—has been oral rather than written, whose standards of propriety are sometimes those of an earlier and grosser age, whose ideas of right and wrong are beclouded by ignorance and distorted by prejudice. And at the same time hosts of our people, with little background of hereditary refinement to steady them, have become suddenly rich, “beyond the dreams of avarice.” The shock has upset their ideas and their standards. Riches have come so suddenly and so vastly even to the educated, to those whose culture dates back for generations, that it has overturned their ideals also. Our literature is menaced both from below and from above. Books that distinctly commend what is wrong, that teach how to sin and tell how pleasant sin is, sometimes with and sometimes without the added sauce of impropriety, are increasingly popular, tempting the author to imitate them, the publishers to produce, the booksellers to exploit. Thank heaven they do not tempt the librarian. Here at last is a purveyor of books who has no interest in distributing what is not clean, honest, and true. The librarian may, if he will—and he does—say to this menacing tide, “Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.”
HOW TO RAISE THE STANDARD OF BOOK SELECTION[9]
If a man is to improve himself, he must first realize his own deficiencies; in other words, he must know what he ought to be, and how and in what degree he falls short of it.
First, then, what are the best books; and do we get them?
“Best” here as always is a relative term; what is best for one may not be best for another, or for all. We hear “good books” gravely recommended to people who will not read them, and who could not extract the good from them if they did read them. When the book fits the man, provided he is a good man, it is a good book, ipso facto.
You remember the tale of the rural parish priest at dinner with his bishop. The host, desiring to poke a little quiet fun, asked him whether it were lawful to baptize a man in soup. “I should make a distinction,” calmly answered the priest; “if it were good thick soup, I should say not; if it were wishy-washy stuff like this we are eating, it would be quite proper.”